Of course, Sam hadn’t taken Dwayne on as a client with the intention of being his babysitter. Ray Berg, Dwayne’s long time agent, had hired Scorpio to help rehabilitate the pro athlete’s image by providing the seemingly easy service of escorting him when he attended a function at a location that didn’t already provide a buffer from the media. Add in a few outings to a different venue here and there, when Dwayne felt like a night out, and that was all there was to it. Clean and simple. It was a single man security detail that paid a shitload of money and one Sam couldn’t refuse. And it had quickly gone from the occasional and straightforward duty of walking Dwayne in and out of whatever establishment he was visiting, making sure he played nice with the public and didn’t throw a punch when a disgruntled fan heckled him, to covering for him when he booked the penthouse suite for his latest piece of trashy side tail.
Sam and Asher had both known when Ray Berg hired them that he was holding out, not mentioning the more salacious details on why a grown ass man being paid millions of dollars to keep his nose clean needed someone to tell him right from wrong. The money this job paid had done its fair share of talking, but what Sam really wanted was the referrals that could come as a result of having such a high profile client. It was the only thing that had kept him from telling both Dwayne and Ray to go fuck themselves.
“Christ, Grady, what went wrong? I thought he was taking his family to see some cartoon show on ice. How the hell did he get himself into trouble doing that?”
“Well, you see... he had to use the bathroom.”
“Okay. And isn’t there a private bathroom located right in the luxury box?” No way did Dwayne Jackson sit in general admission.
“Good question, Sam, and one I asked him myself.” Grady’s brow was raised, as if he couldn’t wait to enlighten Sam on the answer. “According to Dwayne, the one located right there in the box wasn’t working for him. It seems he needed to stretch his legs and take a walk. Just so happened that he came upon a lovely young lady working the front counter in the gift shop and she needed to use the bathroom, as well.”
“You’re fucking shitting me, right?” Sam sat forward in his chair, not bothering to hide his disgust. At Grady’s silent, serious look, he continued, “You mean he screwed a vendor employee, in a public bathroom, with his wife sitting in the same building, while his kids watched Shrek?”
Grady dipped his head, confirming what Sam had just summarized. “In his defense, the bathroom wasn’t public because she had special keycard access to the private employee facilities. At least that’s what he told me when I asked him just who the fuck he thought he was.”
“Oh, well that’s just goddamn great, then!” Sam’s raised voice echoed throughout the quiet office. “The fucking bathroom wasn’t public.”
Pete looked up from his favorite spot near the sunny window, his morning nap interrupted.
“I wanted to walk out in the worst fucking way, Sammy. Right after I made sure he’d be pissing blood for the next month. And he knew it. Carla knew it, too. He thinks she has no idea what he’s up to, but she knows. It was written all over her face.”
Disgusted, Sam could only shake his head. “I’ll take care of it.”
Meaning he was calling Ray out on this bullshit and putting an end to it today. Hell, he’d already been pushing the limit with his guys, putting Grady, Mike and Beckett on rotating details so each one got a small serving of the shit job. Even Sam himself had taken a couple of the assignments. The detail was cake if you could choke down the revolting behavior playing out in front of you like a bad reality show. Beck couldn’t. The former Navy SEAL, who had nerves of steel and the unsettling disposition to match, had lost his shit after his latest assignment, stalking into the office the next morning and telling Sam that he wasn’t an expert in counter-terrorism and unconventional warfare so he could watch some arrogant jackass snort coke off a crack whore with dead teeth and crotch rot. It had taken the promise of an extra week’s paid vacation and Sam’s hesitant acknowledgment that the Navy had bigger balls than the Army to calm the man down. Dwayne had one more chance with him and that was it. If he fucked it up, then Scorpio was out. Sam would lose the sweet money, the potential contacts, and possibly his respected reputation with well connected agent if he did so, but this cluster fuck couldn’t go on.
Given the fact that he wanted to puke first and beat the ever loving shit out of Dwayne Jackson second, he had no choice. Sam hated cheaters only slightly less than he hated liars.
“Not gonna tell me the reason for your good mood, are you?” Grady’s voice was sly and Sam scowled in return.
“What good mood? That asshole just ruined my day.”
“Well, I hope whoever put that happy face on you first thing this morning is there to put it back tonight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go ask Misty to locate some paperwork for me. I think it’s in the very bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. You know, way in the back. She’s gonna have to bend over real low to reach it.” He winked on his way to the door. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll spot her.”
“That’s a prime example of an HR violation, Foster,” Sam said, to the empty doorway. There wasn’t any heat in the words. Grady was all talk, anyway. The kind of guy who enjoyed everything about life and never took a whole hell of a lot too seriously, Grady’s mood rarely strayed from good. Hell, downright chipper, some would say. But, he was a stickler for rules and wasn’t one to break them. The former Green Beret was only twenty-seven, but he’d been around the block during his stellar military career. It was a damn wonder the guy managed to be so carefree and fun loving. Both Sam and Asher had seen firsthand what live combat action did to a person—body and mind—and that was why they recruited from a limited pool of retired veterans only. Just like Grady and Beck, Mendoza and Nolan Ellis had spent years carrying out critical and dangerous missions before seeking a place where their special skill set could be utilized after their commitment to Uncle Sam was done. Scorpio was that place. And as their resident Wanda Wonderful, Grady managed to keep things light around the office.
And damn it, he’d been spot on about Sam’s happy face.
Swearing under his breath at the rapidly growing number of emails in his inbox, he was hoping like hell to get out of there by six tonight, already thinking about how soon he could see Ali again. Last night had been one of the most memorable of his life, taking him completely by surprise. Only planning to have a few drinks with his intriguing new neighbor, Sam had been shocked as hell at how soon they’d ended up in bed. He certainly wasn’t complaining, but usually if he had a chick horizontal an hour after their first beer, then he had what he’d come for and only wanted the hell out of there pronto. Without strings. He wasn’t proud of the fact, but he wasn’t about to sugarcoat it, either. Which told him one very important thing.
Ali was different.
Different and good. Better than anybody else. She was beautiful and sexy, but beyond that, he was drawn to her like no other woman. She had passionately given him open access to her body, but closed the door tightly when it came to what was going on in her mind. Sam had been trained in interrogation tactics and knew without a doubt that Ali was deliberately holding back, rationing what information she fed him. Maybe she was guarding her heart. Maybe not. Years spent looking for things that seemed out of place, no matter how insignificant it might appear, had served him well. And Ali was out of place. As cynical as the world had taught Sam to be, that set off alarm bells in his gut.
The background check would take only minutes. With a few taps on his laptop, he could access databases that would tell him everything about her, and he wasn’t talking about her credit card balances or family history. He could find out her blood type and the last time she’d had a tetanus shot, or what score she had received on her SAT’s and if she’d cheated to get it. Hell, for that matter, he could put Beck on it and find out exactly what she was doing at this very moment.
But Sam didn’t do it. He held back. Ali was prote
ctive of her privacy and it was his choice whether to respect that or not. Respect won out, effectively silencing his gut feeling. Knowing they were on the precipice of something new and extraordinary, Sam didn’t want raw data on a computer screen to interfere. It wasn’t like him to go out on a limb and trust someone without the benefit of hard information to support his decision, not that he ran a report on every woman he dated. He never intended to keep any of them around long enough that it would matter what secrets their past held. And although he’d never done it a single time for personal use, he had run reports in the past for a few buddies who’d gotten themselves into some deep shit before they could come up for air and think with the correct head. Sam always told them it was better to know the woman you were getting into, before you actually got into her.
So did that make him a hypocrite or just a fucking fool? Most likely, both. But he was not starting this relationship with Ali by looking up her credit score or her driving record. He wanted her to open up to him, to tell him about herself, because she trusted him.
And if he didn’t stop obsessing like a teenage girl with puppy love and get to work on all the shit currently covering his desk and filling his inbox, he might never make it home tonight. Swearing long and low, Sam dealt with the problem first and foremost in his mind. Picking up the phone, he dialed Ray Berg’s number, ready to rid himself of one big fucking headache.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The judge signed the decree, Ali. The day before yesterday. Even though Danny contested the divorce, New Jersey is a no-fault state and since you weren’t asking for any community property, assets or alimony, all we needed to do was wait out the six months.”
It was early evening, the sun sinking low in the sky and the air just beginning to cool, as Ali paced the length of her kitchen. Bare feet silent on the wood floor and burner phone to her ear, she absorbed what her lawyer was telling her. “So does that mean it’s done?”
“Yes. In the eyes of the law, as of forty-eight hours ago, you are officially divorced. I can have the original, notarized documents overnighted to you.”
“Does he know? I want to make sure that he knows it’s final.” That she was free and clear from him, at least legally speaking. “And my real address isn’t anywhere on the papers, right?”
Before leaving the state, Ali had set up a post office box, somehow having the foresight to know she needed her mail sent to a location where she wasn’t. Danny was smart, she didn’t need to make it any easier for him. Her lawyer was the only person that knew her true whereabouts and she would check the mailbox monthly, forwarding any correspondence to Ali.
“No, Ali. Every step was taken to ensure your privacy. They all have the New Jersey post office box. And I will personally mail the envelope with these documents myself so your location will remained privileged. As to Danny? The man is licensed to practice law in three states. He should know how this works.”
The relief Ali felt was so strong, she sank bonelessly down onto the slip-covered sofa, clicking the phone off with a heartfelt whisper of thanks. The judge signed the decree, Ali. The day before yesterday. Leaning her head back against the sofa, she laughed out loud, the sound rusty and garbled as an exultant sob joined in. The weight of the world began to lift and she inhaled deeply, the suffocating mistakes of her past slowly easing. Oh, the seed of fear was still there, deep in the pit of her stomach, but the undiluted hope she felt minimized it. She was one step closer to putting the pain of the past six years behind her. A new beginning was within reach and Ali could finally see her opportunity for happiness on the horizon.
She’d already had her fits of anger and cathartic crying sessions over the end of her doomed marriage, working through the devastating emotions with the help of unaccompanied time and fresh perspective. And a good bottle of chardonnay, when the doldrums really set in. Determined not to repeat the past, Ali spent hours racking her brain, tallying up every red flag she had either missed or discounted. She’d been doing exactly that the night before last, sitting on the beach watching the sun go down and wondering if she’d ever have a normal life, when Pete interrupted her melancholy musings and made his introduction, Sam following shortly behind. The tears that night weren’t from sadness or regret over what had been lost, but instead what she’d never even had to begin with. Her marriage hadn’t been driven by dreams for a long, fulfilling life together, spent juggling children and work and laundry, along with bills that couldn’t always be paid. No, Ali’s ill-fated marriage had instead been filled with things like control and isolation, and abject resentment by both parties. The tears she’d cried that night on the beach were because she had so desperately wanted the hopes and dreams, along with the kids and the bills. Her mama always told her, if the foundation was strong, than hardship and happiness could co-exist. And that was what Ali signed up for the day she married Daniel Davis in a Fairfield County, Connecticut courthouse when she was twenty-two years old.
When she should have been old enough—and smart enough—to know better.
What did that say about her? That she could so easily be duped by a man? Raised in a loving and supportive home, Ali had never been told to shut up as a child. Never been told to look pretty and act happy. Never been told that when you broke the rules, you had to face the consequences, and that usually included an open-handed bitch slap that came from left field—a move Danny had down pat. Her mother was a tough old broad who didn’t take shit from her father or anybody else, for that matter. Anna May Ross was a God fearing woman who went to church every Sunday morning and cooked a hot meal for her husband every night. She’d always been firm but loving to her only child, until the day Ali had refused to listen to her wise advice and walked away from her parents to be with a man that her mother had somehow instinctively known was bad, even though she’d met him only once. Ali had never returned to her hometown, nor had she seen her parents again. She realized now why Danny had been so adamant she break ties with them. He knew her mother saw in him what Ali herself had yet to see.
If her mother was standing in front of her right now, in this very room, she would look Ali straight in the eye and sternly say, “Listen up, Ali Ann. I didn’t raise you to think it’s okay for a man to treat you that way. Now you wipe your eyes and stand up straight. And you best clean up your house if you want a happy life.”
Cleaning up your house was her mother’s way of saying get your mind right.
“Well, Mama. I’m trying.” Ali whispered the words to the empty room, wishing she could simply pick up the phone and say it directly to her, the woman whom she had not spoken with since she’d blindly followed Danny to upstate New York six years ago, armed with her barely dry Bachelor’s degree in journalism, a second hand suitcase full of discount department store clothes, and a two-carat diamond engagement ring. Oh, and those dreams for a long and wonderful marriage.
Her mama had been right, of course. Ali had figured it out for herself pretty damn quickly, too. But by then it was too late to go back. She was bound, by the law and her pride and her fear of Danny, and Ali hadn’t contacted her parents again after that night. The internet had been the one to tell her that her dad had died of cancer last year and that her mama was still living in the same house Ali had grown up in. Any female on the planet could tell you that the relationship between a mother and daughter was the single most fragile, and the most difficult, of all relationships. But no matter how old you grew or how strained that relationship became, deep down inside a girl’s heart, she always wanted her mama. Ali was no different. And one day she would go home to see her, and she prayed that day would come soon.
When it was safe. When Danny wasn’t a threat. When Ali had her house clean.
The sudden shadow moving in front of her glass doors sent her heartbeat skyrocketing and she jumped up from the sofa, banging her knee against the hard edge of the coffee table. A second later she recognized the large, broad shoulders, dark hair and too handsome face. Walking to the door, she jerked it open w
ith an irritated huff.
“Jesus Christ, Sam! You just took another year off my life! I swear to God, you need a bell around your neck.” He laughed, snaking an arm around her before she could step back. Despite her scolding words, she immediately returned his hug, burying her smiling face in his musky smelling shirt. “Give a girl a warning signal next time, will you? Stomp your feet or something.”
“You are the most skittish person I know.” He leaned down to kiss her, his lips soft against hers, teasing her with tiny licks of his tongue. “I still like you, though.” And with that statement, he released her, walking to the fridge and grabbing a beer from her fully stocked array of options. “How was your day?”
Rubbing away the pain in her knee, it took her a second to regroup. Sam, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at home. “My day was...” How was her day? No one had asked her that in a long time. At least, no one who actually cared about the answer. “It was fine, I guess.” Better than fine, according to the State of New Jersey. “Yeah, all in all? I’d have to say it was pretty good.”
NEXT TO ME (A Love Happens Novel Book 1) Page 6